Currently, a customer receives bills from a biller through standard mail systems. Examples of billers include credit card companies, utilities, banks, and other entities for which a customer receives a service which requires billing. The customer receives a bill, usually monthly, from the biller and remits payment to the biller through the mail system. Each customer needs to spend a significant amount of time each month to respond to the various bills. The most common method of bill payment is to write paper checks for the appropriate amounts and mail such checks to the biller. This method is labor intensive and time consuming for the customer, and must be done on multiple occasions each month since the bills do not normally arrive or become due on the same date.
Electronic bill presentment is a process for providing a customer with a bill electronically. Electronic bill presentment permits a customer to view and pay their bills electronically, for example, over the Internet. FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional electronic bill presentment system. In this system, a customer, located at terminal 110, wishes to pay bills electronically. Terminal 110 may be, for example, a personal computer connected to network 120. The customer registers with a biller located at biller terminal 130. The registration may comprise, for example, transmitting, to the biller terminal, customer information such as customer name and account information. Once the biller terminal receives and verifies the customer information, the biller will transmit the customer's bill by the electronic bill presentment methods. For example, the biller may transmit the bill to the customer via email each month. This is achieved by transmitting the email from biller terminal 130 through network 120 to customer terminal 110. Once the customer receives the email containing the bill, the customer may pay the bill by conventional mail or electronic means.
Some billers currently offer this service, but if a customer wants to have bills of different biller presented electronically, the customer must register with each biller separately. However, a customer may want to view and pay all of their bills in a single location, rather than registering with each biller. Additionally, not all billers presently have the ability to implement electronic bill presentation methodology. Further, even billers that implement electronic bill presentation often still send bills by mail in addition to electronically.